


Eternal Sunset

by Sermocinare



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-06
Updated: 2011-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sermocinare/pseuds/Sermocinare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, two people who are meant for each other still never get to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eternal Sunset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yetanothermask](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=yetanothermask).



> Written for LJ's help_japan charity auctions

1939

“Very pleased to meet you... Nite Owl, was it? Catchy name, I like it. Please, do come in.”

Larry's voice, smooth and with what Sally has come to think of as businessman's excitement, drifts down the hallway, and Sally straightens up in her chair a bit, touching her hair once more and putting on a smile. Ever since Larry had come up with that idea with the ad in the papers, more and more costumed crimefighters have come forward, and each and every one of them meets both Larry and her before they meet any of the others. After all, who knows what kind of people might be behind those masks, and if they want this group to generate positive publicity, they need to filter out any creeps and weirdos right at the start. Captain Metropolis might think that this is about pooling their resources for the good of the city, but Sally knows better.

Well, this one isn't the type of person they want to keep out. This one is the type of person they need to have in. Sally can feel it the moment he walks through the door in his hood and mask and chain mail briefs. Even though he seems a bit cautious, there is an aura of determination and bright energy about him that is hard to miss.

She gets up and takes a few steps towards him, holding out her hand, which he takes and kisses with all the grace and manners of a true gentleman.

“I'm sure you have already heard of the Silk Spectre?” There is an unmistakable hint of smug pride in Larry's voice. Everyone has heard of the Silk Spectre.

“Please,” Sally says, her voice warm as honey, “call me Sally. And I've certainly heard of you. You're quite the hero. Taking out that gang of armed muggers single-handedly.”

“It was a lot harder than the papers made it seem,” Nite Owl replies, and there's nothing false about his modesty. “Which is why I think the idea of us working together is really worth looking into. I mean, I hardly have to tell you how dangerous it can be out on the streets on your own, right? Not that I mean that you can't hold your own,” he hastily adds.

Sally smiles. Yes, Nite Owl really is a gentleman.

Sometimes, he's even a bit too much of one.

After they've handed the would-be robbers over to the police, Sally rounds in on him, her gloved finger stopping just inches away from his nose. “Dammit, Hollis! What do you think you were doing?!” But oh, she knows, she knows exactly what he was doing. “I don't need you to protect me! I need you to worry about catching those bastards, and not about if I might or might not have sprained my ankle or any of that!” She throws her hands in the air, and if it weren't for the fact that she did sprain her ankle somehow when she kicked that guy in the chest, she probably would've stormed off and left him to chew on that.

Hollis just shakes his head, slowly, as if he's just now realizing what happened. “I thought you were in danger.”

Sally's anger melts away, and she puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him a smile: “Me being in danger is pretty much what this is about, remember? I'm sorry I snapped at you. After all,” she winks at him, “you can't help it that you're a knight in shining armor. Or, well, chainmail boxers.”

Hollis' smile at that is almost apologetic, and Sally can't help thinking how adorable it is that he doesn't even realize just how much of a knight he can be sometimes. Even if it makes him forget that she's not a damsel in distress now and then.

“Come on, let's head back to headquarters. I think I need a stiff drink after this.” She carefully puts some weight on her ankle. “Shit!” she winces, and holds out her arm to him: “I think I do need your help now...”

1940

Sally had told them to go ahead without her, but then he and Hooded Justice had decided to wait around for her after all. Later, Hollis will ask himself if it was because some part of him, some cop's sixth sense or something, knew that a bad thing was going to happen.

When he hears HJ's accented voice snarling “You bastard!” through the open door, Hollis runs from the hallway to the rec room, and what he sees there takes him a few seconds to really comprehend. HJ has got the Comedian by his collar and is beating the snot out of the little punk, his huge frame shaking with rage. And Sally, she's barely hanging on to the edge of the pool table, and she's bleeding, crying...

When Hollis sees that the Comedian's pants are hanging around his ankles, the pieces fall into place, forming a picture Hollis would rather not see. Still, he rushes over to her side, crouching down next to her because she is sitting on the floor now, curled up into herself.

“Sally...” Hollis reaches out to touch her shoulder, but she flinches away. She's shuddering violently now, and Hollis quickly gets up and jogs over to the couch, where he knows there's a blanket, returning to her and gently placing it around her shoulders.

A part of Hollis wants to follow Hooded Justice, who had been dragging the Comedian out of the room by the nape of his neck. Follow him and make the little shit pay for what he's done. But Sally is hurt and scared, and he can't leave her alone like this.

“Sally?” He doesn't try to touch her this time, just looks at her, trying to catch her eyes, which look so lost in the blackness of her smeared make-up.

Sally looks up at him, and then her arms are around his neck, tugging him close, her face buried into his shoulder. He carefully puts his arms around her, holding her while she calms down, gingerly rubbing her back.

After a while, maybe minutes, maybe half an hour, Sally pulls back, drawing a deep, shaky breath. She tries to smile, but the smile falters before it has a chance to reach her eyes: “I'm such a mess, I'm sorry...”

Hollis looks at her, taking in her ruined make-up, her eyes that are red and puffy from crying, her bruised mouth, and they're going to have to put some ice on that soon, and still...

“No,” he says, reaching up to touch her disheveled hair, “you're not a mess. And you've got nothing to be sorry for, Sal. Nothing at all.”

This time, the smile does reach her eyes, and she holds out her hand to him: “Help me clean myself up, will you?”

“Of course.”

1947

This is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, but somehow, Sally isn't feeling it. Her reflection in the mirror shows a beautiful girl in a gorgeous wedding dress, all elegant lace and white as snow, and she attempts a smile. Radiant, dazzling. Good. She's still got it.

It's not like she never entertained the dreams most girls have at some point in their lives, about the handsome, dashing prince on the white horse, come to take her away and marry her and make her a princess. It's just that she knows life isn't a fairy tale, and if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to sacrifice some dreams along the way.

And really, Larry is a good man. So yes, he's not romantic, or heroic, or any of those other things princes are supposed to be. He isn't even particularly handsome, when it comes down to it. But he has business smarts. He knows where the money is, and he can promote her, and her career. And he's nice enough. She could do a lot worse than that.

For a moment, Sally's thoughts wander to HJ and Nelly, whom she knows are sitting in the front row pews of the church. Poor HJ, she thinks with a short smirk. He's going to have to find someone else to hide behind. Oh, everyone looks at him and sees the big strong guy who can lift a grown man by the neck with one hand. Who isn't afraid of anything. But Sally knows better. The man's afraid of himself, and that's the ugly truth right there. Afraid of who he really is. But then, a lot of men are. Especially those who hide behind a mask at night. At least she's always been honest with herself.

She is adjusting her veil when there's a knock at the door, and Hollis' voice: “Are you decent?”

Sally has to laugh. “I'm never decent, Hollis. I thought you'd know that by now. Come on in.” Here they are, having known each other for years and years, and he's still such a boy scout.

Hollis peeks his head in before slipping through the door, his smile as he sees her almost embarrassed: “Holy... Sally, you look amazing. I really hope Larry knows what a lucky man he is.”

“I sure as hell hope he knows it, too,” Sally quips, and for a moment, she's sure that Hollis was frowning right then. But that moment is over in less than a heartbeat, and Hollis is back to his amiable expression, though there is something off about it. A certain sadness, hiding behind that smile like a burglar behind the curtains.

“Anyway, he sent me in here to see if you were ready. Everybody's waiting.”

“Good,” Sally replies, raising her chin, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Let them wait another minute or two.”

“Always playing it up with the audience,” Hollis says, but it's not a criticism. In fact, it sounds almost fond. “You know you don't need that kind of thing, Sal. You get everyone's attention the minute you walk into a room.”

Sally waves her hand dismissively, but there's a fierce, almost angry heat rising in her chest, so she turns away from him and pretends that she's adjusting the pins in her hair until it's settled down again.

“Save your sweet talking for someone else, Hollis Mason. Remember, I'm going to be a married woman in about half an hour.”

She can hear him draw his breath, and for a wild moment, all those hopes and dreams she buried, about the knight on the white horse, about love and partnership and respect and happily ever after rise like a balloon into the clear blue sky.

And then she hears him turn around towards the door, and everything bursts like the dream bubble it was.

“I'll tell them you'll be out in a minute.”

Sally has to swallow around the lump in her throat, and she hopes her voice doesn't tremble: “You do that.”

And who's she to call anyone else a coward, anyway.

1948

Hollis feels kind of embarrassed, standing in front of the ticket booth and asking the nice lady sitting behind it for a ticket to see a movie titled “Silk Swingers of Suburbia”. It just sounds so sleazy, and he fights the urge to tell the woman that he's not the kind of man who watches that kind of movie, no, he's just here because of an old friend. Because that's what it is.

Sally had talked so much about this, back when they were still talking regularly. Back when the Minutemen were still together.

“A movie, Hollis,” she had told him once, and the ways her eyes had shone had made her look younger, almost like a teenager. “Larry knows this amazing director, and he's agreed to make a movie about my life. Everyone will know my name.”

“Everyone already knows your name,” Hollis had retorted, grinning, swept along by her enthusiasm.

It had taken years, but now the movie was finally finished. Hollis might have missed it, not being much of a moviegoer, but he'd seen a poster for it in the window of the cinema he walked past on his way home from the precinct. Sally's name had caught his eye, even if it was printed rather smaller than Hollis had thought it would be. And so he has decided to go and see it. He owes it to Sally, and besides, well, he misses her. It is a chance to hear her voice again, and to see her face, magnificent and radiant and filling the whole screen, just like it had filled his mind so many times.

By the time the lights have gone out, the uncomfortable feeling Hollis had had buying the ticked was being drowned out by anticipation, and his mouth stretches into a smile.

He doesn't wait for the lights to come on again, though. Not even halfway through, Hollis just can't take it any more, rising from he seat and quickly walking out of the darkened cinema and out into the fading daylight of the streets, his heart and eyes burning with sadness and rage.

Was this really what people saw her like? Was this the way Larry, that incompetent director, the world saw Sally like? Nothing but a bimbo in a tight costume, someone to oogle and leer at? Passing the illuminated window which held the posters for tonight's show, Hollis wants to punch through the glass, rip out that sleazy bit of trash stuck up there and rip it to tiny pieces. Or at least rip out Sally's name, because this movie and the person it portrayed has nothing to do with the Sally he knows. The woman who wasn't afraid of anything, least of all speaking her mind. The crimefighter who'd taken out three men, one of them armed with a knife, by herself. The girl with the shining eyes and the laugh like bells chiming on the wind.

How could they do this to her? How could she allow them to? Didn't she know what people would think of her now?

Turning left into a side street, Hollis heads to a bar where most people dodn't know who he even is, and drinks until the sting in his heart has died down to a dull throb. For the next few weeks, he takes a different route home.

1962

Sitting in a deck chair on the patio behind the house, Sally sips her coffee and leafs through the morning paper. Most of the news doesn't interest her. Politics, war. Depressing stuff, all of it. She still skims it most days, because she wants to keep up with what's happening. See what the world's coming to. Also, you never know what they're going to ask you in interviews these days. The arts and culture section has always interested her more, with the movie and book reviews. She doesn't read them for the opinions of the various critics. She's perfectly capable of forming her own opinion, thank you very much. But, well, she's always been drawn to a good story. That's probably why she has tried her damned best to turn her own life into one of them. Not that she got very far with that, she thinks to herself, smirking.

The book releases has a piece that catches her interest immediately.

“Why, Hollis, you devil,” she mutters under her breath. “And there I always thought you didn't like publicity, or people nosing around in your business.”

He's written a book. And not just any book, an autobiography. Hollis Mason, the guy who had always insisted that private things are, well, private, has written a book telling everyone and their dog that he used to dress up in a costume and hunt down criminals. Now that's something she just has to read.

Having returned from the bookstore, Sally sits down on her deck chair once more, a large glass of ice tea with some pazazz sitting next to her, and starts to read.

And parts of it, well, it's like being back at HQ, sitting with him at the meeting table while they were cooling down from patrol, and listening to Hollis tell stories about his childhood on the farm, about his grandfather and his dad. Sure, some of the things are new to her, like the story Hollis opens with, the guy shooting himself, and dear god, the poor boy, having to witness something like that. But a lot of it is just so familiar that for a moment, Sally wonders if she had Hollis wrong, that he wasn't as private as she always thought. He seldom told those stories when the others were around, though. No, he told them to her. Now he's telling the world, and for a moment, Sally feels a pang of something that is almost regret, as if by sharing these stories with others, Hollis had taken them away from her.

Her drink stands forgotten, the ice cubes having long since melted away, watering it down, the perspiration on the outside of the glass beginning to dry. It is only when Hollis starts talking about the night they took that group photo that Sally's hand wanders to the glass almost as if of its own volition, grasping it and bringing it up to her lips, the rim shaking slightly before she takes her first, long sip. As she reads on, her fingers tighten around it until her knuckles stand out sharply, and it's a good thing that the glass is thick, sturdy.

For a moment, her lips tremble, but then she presses them together until they're forming a thin line. She takes a deep breath, and then hurls the book away, the muted splash as it lands in the pool and immediately sinks beneath the surface giving her a short feeling of triumph.

How dare he. How dare he tell the world about what happened that night, about what almost happened. Oh, she has no problem with him telling everyone about how it really was, about all the tensions and backstabbing and less than stellar habits of each and every one of them, but not about this. She imagines all the people reading about it, raising their eyebrows in shock or scandalized glee, and for a moment, she feels just as helpless and violated as she had that night, over twenty years ago.

Pacing back into the gloom of the house, Sally quickly drains her drink, heading off towards the kitchen to pour herself another. Anger is burning deep inside her chest, clawing at her ribs like a caged animal, and for a moment, she considers calling Hollis and giving the bastard an earful. She never would have expected something like this from him. Hollis, of all people. Hollis, who had held her and helped her clean herself up and put herself back together. Who had argued, in a volume and with a vocabulary she would have never expected of him, against Larry's decision to keep the whole thing quiet for the good of the group. But that was it, wasn't it? Hollis had always wanted the world to know what had happened, so that they could join him in his outrage. He'd never understood Sally's own hesitation to go public with it. In his world, things were clear-cut. Eddie was the despicable, out-of-control brute, and she was the innocent victim. Even though he'd often expressed a less than approving opinion about the amount of cleavage she showed, or about the length of her skirt, the thought of laying any blame on her had never crossed his mind.

The anger that had been eating away at her turning into a raw, brittle pain, Sally lets herself slide down on the floor, her back resting against the cool wooden front of the kitchen counter, her face contorted and her body shaking beneath silent sobs. It's only when the face of the clock on the opposite wall tells her that Laurel will be home from school soon that she picks herself up again and goes outside to fish the soggy mess of a book out of the pool and throw it into the garbage bin. The next day, she drives to a different bookstore to buy another one, any thought of calling Hollis about it banished to the back of her mind. After all, she has to be prepared for the inevitable throng of reporters who will want to interview her.

1985

“Sally?”

His voice sounds older. Of course it does, he is older, they're both older now. But it's rich and warm as honey, and Sally instantly recognizes it, even if they haven't talked for over a decade. Not since that one reunion party she threw, years and years ago, which had been a complete disaster. Well, not a complete disaster, but very nearly.

“Hollis?”

“Yeah.”

“Hollis Mason. Jesus. All this time you've had my number, and you wait until our sunset years to use it?”

The moment she says those words, she knows she's only half joking.

“Well, it seemed like a special occasion, Sal.”

He tells her about the news, about Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre, rescuing people from a burning building, and for a moment, it takes her back forty, fifty years, memories of the original Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, side by side. The glory days. But oh, those are long gone now, and all that's left for them is to re-live the glory vicariously through their children. Sure, Dan's not his kid, but he might as well be.

“I can't get over Laurie back in costume...”

“You know Sal,” he suddenly says, “by the sound of your voice, you're sounding younger than ever.”

She smiles to herself. Could be, yes. After all, she's feeling younger. Just hearing his voice over the phone makes her feel like she's twenty again. As if the years, all the history they have with each other, suddenly weren't all that important any more. And maybe they aren't. Maybe, when all's said and done, when all the ambition and goals of her youth have faded away into sepia-toned ghosts, all that really matters is his voice. Old age can turn a girl sentimental, she thinks, shaking her head.

“Oh. Why, bless you, Hollis. But that's probably just senility.”

And then someone's knocking at his door, the world and its demands coming between them once again.

But Sally's thoughts stay with him for a long time even after she's hung up the phone. She should call him again tomorrow. Ask him, no, demand him to fly out to California to visit her. Catch up. Take up all the threads they've always left lying around, and maybe this time, they can make something of it. Now that the world doesn't care about them, about who they are, anymore. She has always been sad about how she's faded away, about how fewer and fewer people know who she is, was, anymore. But maybe, she realizes, that's not a bad thing at all.


End file.
